#loughree

Loughree couldn't help but smile at how Aline stayed across the room, hands joined together over her mouth and nose. The little girl stared, otherwise impassive, never making eye contact. Loughree lifted her hand and beckoned, saying, "Aline, it's fun to watch it melt. I opened a window to get rid of the smell." All this earned was a small shake of Aline’s head; she couldn't stand it. The boiling oil of wild hazel, the melting beeswax, seemed to Loughree incredibly warm and sweet, almost delicious on the air. What mattered more to Aline was that it was a strong smell, too strong, permeating the one-room home that was also Loughree's workshop.

Later on, Loughree would learn to heat the oil and wax outside. After Aline started living with her. After Aline was hers, because Aline wasn't anyone else's.

Aline preferred the wax when it took the form of polish. After the oil and the wax were thoroughly incorporated and cooled, Loughree would scrape it out of the pot and use a light cloth to spread it over the furniture. Loughree had made all the furniture in the house herself, and the beeswax polish kept it dark and gleaming. Aline liked running her hand over a tabletop and a cabinet door and proclaiming it "Smooth," in her small voice.

These memories stood out. Aline often made observations about how things felt when she touched them. She was small for a Hyur. Loughree couldn't guess her age, though Loughree thought Aline behaved younger than she looked and didn't quite have a handle on talking yet. Perhaps it was from trauma over her experience as a child alone among Ala Mhigo's refugees, or just because she'd been born with a mind that prioritized different kinds of learning.

Aline looked at Loughree's designs and watched Loughree piece together the furniture with a unique fascination, an air of silence about her. Loughree loved her for that. Woodcraft was a hobby, not a job, and Loughree mostly sanded, altered, reworked, and re-polished her own furniture over and over again just because she enjoyed perfecting them. She would add new flourishes to the furniture, patterns to the wood, curling decoration to the trim. Aline would run her hands over the furniture and stare at the changed bits, examining them, lips twitching.

Loughree remembered this: sanding the beeswax off a chair leg and handing it to Aline. And Aline's small hands running over it, eyes wide, saying almost in shock, "Smooth." It was late evening, on of those first nights when Aline stopped going back to the refugee camp at night. Maybe a week before Loughree insisted on taking her back personally only to find out that 'back' was just Aline’s habit, that there was no one there for Aline to go back to. Right now, lamplight shone in Aline's black hair, danced in her dark eyes.

"It won't stay smooth without the wax, though," Loughree said.

At the mention of the wax, Aline lay one hand over her mouth in nose, like she expecting the pungence of melted oil and wax to strike her at any moment.

Loughree laughed at that. "It'll get rough unless we put the wax on it. Look, I'll show you." Loughree got a tin and opened it, showing Aline a stiff but smooth substance inside, oily and yellow. "See? It doesn't smell too bad once it's cooled down. Want me to show you how it works?"

Aline didn't answer, but let Loughree take the chair leg back and watched quietly as Loughree used a cloth to apply the wax. The wood took on a slightly darker, warm color, shining as Loughree worked the polish into it. Aline wasn't always this quiet. Sometimes she was loud and energetic, driven by curiosity to mess with Loughree's tools and then running off when told 'no'. Aline could argue and throw fits as powerful as any child, which Loughree didn't begrudge her. Loughree could act like an obnoxiously child sometimes, too, though not as often while Aline lived with her.